Hello everyone, I’m here to write about a more serious topic than usual, but I feel that it’s important. I recently received a Steam code from a publisher for the game Samurai Wish. It looked to be a game similar to Hotline Miami, so I was pretty excited to give it a try. As usual, I went to create a video of my first few minutes of playtime so I could link back to it in case I write a review later, and after fifteen minutes of playing, I discovered an issue that I believe needs to be addressed.
The premise of this game is that the player controls the titular samurai, and this samurai goes around granting wishes. Obviously, these wishes all involve killing waves of enemies, but the enemies vary from stage to stage. I will give the game kudos on the variety of different levels available, with one level even taking the player to a graveyard to kill ghosts. That said, however, there is one level that made me a little uncomfortable, and is the primary topic of today’s post.
This stage is simply called “School”, and the person making the wish is a student who feels wronged by the schoolteachers. The samurai then has to go into a school and massacre every teacher there. Thankfully, there aren’t any students in the level, but this is a strange setting for this kind of game given the current political climate.
I don’t know if the developer of this game is American, so it is entirely possible that the developer just doesn’t know about the current firestorm surrounding school shootings. It is also possible that the developer didn’t feel it was a problem to include this level because the protagonist uses shurikens and a sword instead of guns. For all I know, it’s actually a criticism on the “gun-free zone” system that schools employ, given that all of the teachers are unarmed and easy to take down. The reasoning for why this level is in here doesn’t matter, though, because it is still a level about a person going into a school and killing everyone there. The developer has every right to include what he wants in a game, so I don’t fault him for putting this here, regardless of his reasoning.
Instead, my point for making this article is to make sure people are aware of it. I’m not sure that I would have played this game if I knew about this level, and I’m sure others are in the same boat. I simply want to give people the facts and the choice to purchase this game or not upon knowing of this level. If someone isn’t upset by this level, then go ahead and give it a buy! Otherwise, maybe play another round of Hotline Miami, instead.
This is a complicated topic, and I’d love to know what others are thinking. Please let me know your own thoughts in the comments!
Note: This post is imported from a prior blog, HannieBee Games.
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